God is love…And God gives, He never takes…Therefore love must give

Today at Holy Mass we hear in the first reading from St John…In the text John boils down who God is into one word…Love…..”Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God”….But at the root of it all, do we really know what love is?…I believe that if we asked 10 random people, we would get 10 different answers….”Love is a feeling” - would probably be the common thread amongst many when asked, “What is love?”…Love is in fact a feeling but that is just the beginning of it…For love to be true, it must be sacrificial….St John tells us God is love but ask your self why is that?…..The answer should be clear…God the Father so loved the world that he gave his only Son away….And Jesus the Son, so loved the world, that he allowed his body to be torn to shreds for the sake of our redemption….What do both of those examples show us?…..That at the heart of authentic love, there is deep sacrifice……This is what the world today gets very wrong…..The word sacrifice is a “bad word” in today’s culture……Sacrificial living is rejected…….And without an understanding of why and how to sacrifice, “modern love” fails - Why? - Because the very essence of what love truly is, “the sacrifice of one self for the other” is rejected……Only through Jesus Christ does mankind have an understanding about what sacrifice really means because through Jesus Christ, the Catholic embraces sacrifice fully - Sacrifice has a deep meaning - Its not rejected but embraced…..As our society continues to reject God, they indirectly reject how and why they need to sacrifice to experience what authentic love is all about….God is love and if God is love, then we in turn must live sacrificial lives….Most do this in the family setting….Because in “giving our life a way”, we in turn find it

“When Jesus saw the vast crowd, his heart was moved with pity for them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things”

No one likes to “give up their stuff”…This is a natural feeling and very human at its core…One of the first words we learn as children is “mine”…And as Catholics it takes a life time to unlearn that word! - All of us, whether directly or indirectly fight against this - And to live sacrificially is a process that takes a life time to acquire and requires God’s grace….Jesus gave us on the cross the example and while most of us, if not all of us will not be asked by God to die in the manner Jesus died, we are all asked within our station in life to “give our life away’…..Ever since I was a young boy I always wanted to get married and have a big family…And God gave me what I wanted however, he made me wait until I was 43 years old until I found my wife and start having children….My wife conceived eight children, three died in her womb sadly and she gave birth to five…..Before a person has children its impossible to know what the experience is all about….You can’t read about it and know, you must live it…..Having many children is “messy”….Its not like what we see in television…But it is in that “messy” context that a Catholic family, husband, wife and children learn to “die to themselves”…And that process (because it is a process) is aided by Sacramental grace……I remember when I was single and I was at a Mass for a holy priest celebrating his forty year anniversary of his ordination…All types of people were at the Mass…Rich and poor alike - He was that kind a priest….What I remember about this Mass, was not what was said from the pulpit, it was what I saw in the pew…I remember distinctly seeing this large family go up to receive Holy Communion…The father’s shirt was all disheveled, he had a child in his arms and one clinging to his leg…I remember seeing his wife who was heavily pregnant, she was carrying a child and also was leading another child by the hand…The man’s wife looked exhausted!……Again, at the time I was single but the sight of this family caught my eye….That is the only thing I remember about that Mass….God was showing me something that day…What he was showing me was what authentic love really looks like - The process of giving yourself away until there is nothing left! - And that is messy!……Love like I just described “strips” us of our vey self and in that "space" we make ourself open and available to God…..God can not fill us with his Holy Spirit when we are “full of ourself”…..Jesus showed us the way…He opened his arms wide on the cross…Even his cloths were “taken away”….There was nothing left but one thing and that one thing was love…This is what love is…We can find this kind of love in the married state but we can also find if we never get married by giving of your time and resources to the poor in our community…This type of love can also be found in religious life by abandoning oneself to the Church and the people in the pews…But make no mistake…..No matter what your vocation or state in life is, when we refuse to “give our life away”, we cheat ourself in the end - We in essence “short change” our self…Why?….Because a life without authentic love is hardly a life….And to know and experience authentic love means we must give our very self away…Authentic love is within the reach of all people to experience…But its a choice - Not a “feeling”.

“God sent his only-begotten Son into the world so that we might have life through him……In this is love”

St John breaks down for us who and what God is today at Mass…God is love…..However, as I tried to explain in this reflection, there is a deep misunderstanding of what love is today….Love is much more then a “feeling”….The kind of love I described is within all of our reach…But let me be clear, this is not an easy road to embrace…This is why Jesus gave us a Church and this is why we have the Sacraments, which give us the needed grace to “walk this road”…..Make no mistake about it, this is the “road to heaven”….As St Francis said, “Its in giving that we receive”….We are all called to “give ourself away” and that my friends is a choice, not a feeling…That is why true love is a choice and we make that choice each and every day....We must “open our hands” wide and place them into the hands of God and never look back….This is the road to heaven…The only road…To give until there is nothing left and then we can echo the same words that Jesus said on the cross…."It is finished” - There is nothing left!…God is love…And God gives, He never takes…Therefore love must give